Iran said it has transited a major consignment of tangerines from Pakistan to Kazakhstan in an initiative that could open a new corridor for shipment of food items from Southeast Asia to markets as far as Russia.

A freight train set about its long journey from Muslim-residing Yinchuan, the capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, central China, on Tuesday to come to Tehran in the framework of the new Silk Road plan, named the One Belt One Road Initiative (OBOR).

Despite tight budget and little investment, the government was able to raise the share of railways in cargo transportation in Iran, setting the stage for achieving the ambitious targets of the sixth five-year development plan (2017-22).

A Turkish cargo jet crashed near Kyrgyzstan's Manas airport on Monday, killing at least 37 people, most of them residents of a village struck by the Boeing 747 as it tried to land in dense fog, Kyrgyz officials said.

Europe's largest engineering company, Siemens has released the first cargo of properties Iran had ordered for developing South Pars Gas Field before the intensification of Western sanctions in 2012, an operator of some phases of the field said.

A provincial prosecutor's office in Turkey has sought life imprisonment terms for four local prosecutors and a gendarmerie officer allegedly involved in searching Turkish Intelligence Service (MIT) trucks engaged in transporting weapons to foreign-backed militants in Syria.